The number of base station antennas needed for cellular and other wireless communications applications is increasing rapidly due to increased use of mobile wireless communications. Therefore, it is desirable to design low cost base station antennas. At the same time such wireless applications increasingly will require wideband capability. Also some applications require that the antenna can be either linear or circular polarized.
Increasingly, some practical applications also require that the antenna have smaller dimension. For example, antenna installation space restrictions are becoming increasingly problematic due to the limited locations available to install additional antennas for added cellular coverage, especially in urban areas. Also, antenna arrays for providing beam steering or beamwidth adjustment are being deployed and these require several antenna elements, creating further restrictions on the space available for a given antenna element.
Accordingly, a need presently exists for an improved base station antenna design.